PHILADELPHIA -- It's about an 80-mile ride down the Jersey Turnpike from Chester Township, New Jersey, to Citizens Bank Park. Rick Porcello's father, Fred, his brothers Zach and Jake, and some extended family members made the trip to see the 26-year-old pitcher make his Boston Red Sox debut against the Philadelphia Phillies.

PHILADELPHIA — Justin Masterson pitched six strong innings and shortstop Xander Bogaerts keyed a six-run third inning with a three-run triple as the Boston Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-2 on Thursday night. Masterson, making his first start of the season after posting a career-worst 5.88 ERA with Cleveland …

NEW YORK -- Two strikes away from what would have been a tidy win in regulation over the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox instead played the longest game by time in their history -- 6 hours and 49 minutes, which doesn’t count the 16 minutes the game was held up when a couple of banks of stadium lights blew out in the 12th inning.

The Sox went 19 innings before finally subduing the Yankees 6-5 in a game in which the Yankees twice came back in extra innings before finally succumbing, Dustin Pedroia squelching the Yanks’ final bid for yet another comeback with a spectacular turn and throw on a game-ending double play grounder by Garrett Jones.

NEW YORK -- The first game of the season between the Red Sox and Yankees was one to remember -- for anyone still awake at the end. In the latest classic matchup of their long and illustrious rivalry, Boston finally outlasted New York 6-5 in 19 innings early Saturday when the game-ending double play was turned at 2:13 a.m. After squandering leads in the ninth, 16th and 18th, Boston at last went ahead for good on a sacrifice fly by Mookie Betts. Xander Bogaerts scored the decisive run after reaching on his fourth hit in extra innings...

NEW YORK — Right-hander Joe Kelly stuck around until the 10th inning, fell asleep somewhere around the 15th and did not know that the Boston Red Sox had won in the 19th until checking his phone. Center fielder Brock Holt knew what was unfolding Friday night but wound up being …

NEW YORK — The TV cameras, which were trained on Boston Red Sox pitcher Joe Kelly for much more of Saturday afternoon’s 8-4 victory over the Yankees than the Sox dared hope beforehand, caught the initials on his glove: MMM. Kelly has a lively intellect and a slightly off-center sense of humor, so there was no telling what the letters meant.

NEW YORK — Alex Rodriguez drove in four runs, and the New York Yankees scored seven times in the top of the first inning en route to a 14-4 rout of the Boston Red Sox on Sunday night. Rodriguez hit a three-run double off Boston right-hander Clay Buchholz (1-1) in …

NEW YORK -- If Alex Rodriguez had sat down to draw up how he expected his first week back in the major leagues to go, it's doubtful even a player with as healthy an ego as his could have come up with anything as unexpected as what we have seen over the New York Yankees' first six games of 2015.

In the space of six games, he has gone from a guy who was welcomed back uneasily last Monday -- the pregame reception for him on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium was decidedly mixed, with more than a few boos intermingled with the cheers -- to a player whose at-bats are now eagerly anticipated by the fans and anxiously anticipated by the opposition. (You have to know the difference between eagerness and anxiety to know what I'm talking about.)

NEW YORK — In the final week of March, closer Koji Uehara was unsure of when he would return from a strained left hamstring. Over the weekend, that answer became clearer and it is the news that Red Sox fans waited to hear. Uehara pitched the fifth inning for Class …